*
Huna Ecentrists homeship (1/427,100,991 – Ex-sector, sept)
Meawhile, Huna and the white hole swirled around each other like two lovers in a waltz. It was a clumsy waltz. A club-footed oaf, his foot was caught in the elegant lacy hem of his partner’s custom-made dress.
Whichever way you look at it, gravity is just love, bodies drawn together.
The triumvirate waiting patiently for Orpal and his crew to fall into their trap.
*
Chapter Eleven
Space
Harna Gurn said this in 1695 (P.F.O.W.): there is no borrowing in nature. There is no borrowing, but there is a changing of forms.
Before Harna Gurn hit the lecture circuits alchemy had long been the prize. After Harna Gurn, it was chemistry, physics and biology. It was time for the realm of science to shine. But until the advent of alto-science – a new form of science encompassing all disciplines – the Enlightened did not truly see.
Nature does not borrow, it changes. People thought society was outside of nature’s rules. People thought they could it control themselves.
What can change the nature of a man? Harna Gurn answered this question on the alchemy of societies – anything.
Humans in the age of want didn’t realise that nature’s rules applied to them, too. Humans in the age of plenty didn’t believe nature applied to them. They didn’t realise until they learned to live within their means. They took control of their own procreation. They limited themselves.
Harna Gurn believed this limitation, too, was nature’s assertation over the physical realms, nature stamping its authority on the human.
In 2564 P.F.O.W., seven hundred years before his untimely death, Um’lael Sabreme added: Limitation was something the nanides never learned to do.
The Enlightened, after many a near scrape with genosuicide, experimented with other races, other types of armour, other weapons…any experiment would do – after all, the great quest was knowledge, was it not? Nature could not limit them, they believed. This was before the Harna Gurn doctrine.
Someone else devised a bomb from the simplist building blocks nature could provide.
Someone else came up with a way to cheat death.
Humans were unstoppable.
Why did they evolve and how did they fit into the hypothesis?
The Lore, the Enlightened surmised, didn’t fit. They were outside. They borrowed, they did things to which there was no natural answer. Like the nanides.
Thus came about the scientists creed – if something can be done, it must also be able to be undone.
Or, as in the case of the nanides, at the very least swept under the carpet.
*
Saran UL par
Cetee’s holmium armour morphed. She fitted into her environment perfectly. It was a knack the armour possessed.
It was made from the highest compounds available in the lanthanide chain. The armour was originally used for excavations in nitrogenous atmospheres. Mainly a staple of the miner class, it was now a highly sought after commodity. Especially on Saran UL par.
The circumambient atmosphere was more poisonous than even the teraphod’s hydro-oxypilium mixture on Teraphoria. The holmium armour could withstand the acidity of the atmosphere though, and through a modified airpiece Cetee found that she could breath quite comfortably.
Holmium was made for this. It thrived in it. Gas worlds tried to create copies of the armour for use in their mines, but the raw materials were so rare than genuine copies were impossible to make. Which was why, as Cetee walked carefully among the wrecked and cannibalized remains of a thousand ships, piled high as waste, the wreckers team were watching her. The shape of Cetee’s body, the agility and grace with which she moved, the flow of her temporarily stunning white hair, bright and shining in the dull wasteland surrounding her…you would think they had other things on their minds. Like, to take a most basic impulse, sex.
The four wreckers watched her approach from where they hid in the carcass of a C-47/Hun rep class ship left over from the Cove insurrection (it had drifted in from nearby Cove space, where none but the Lore were allowed to pass – it would be a prize to any archeog, but would never be shown). The four men, lusty though they were not, and somewhat pale as the detritus of the last extermination to scourge life from this wasteland planet let no sunlight in, scratched at swarthy beards and thought dirty thoughts.
“God damn, but what I wouldn’t give to get my hands on that,” thought one.
“Sheez, would you look at that nubility, man,” said another to his mate.
“Smoooooth,” he replied.
The last scratched his nether beard and thought the same. What I wouldn’t give to have that armour.
Cetee didn’t enter into it. Had she known how low she rated in their priorities she would have been understandably miffed. After all, what was wrong with her?
When Orpal had landed and as she had wished let her go on her own, she thought she could handle anything the planet threw her way. She knew there was a piece of the emitter there. She still had her navicom taken from Orpal. She could handle anything, too. The four disreputable scavengers were nothing to her. The atmosphere was almost breathable with little modification through her armour, the weapons she would encounter on Saran UL par easily defensible. She could handle anything the planet threw at her.
She wasn’t expecting visitors.
She neared the ship. So it was here. The tiny beeping of the navicom she had stolen from Orpal told her so. She entered the dark and her armour opacisized.
Too late to make any difference to Cetee, the four wreckers rose and followed the armour and the woman within with dark intent.
*
Under space
In the middle of space, the part that bulges out as the legs and arms grow gaunt, the great battle raged.
The Ecentrists’ great force of zealots, Seraph, Cardinal and Bishop class ships swelled across the midrift of space. Most of the Lore that lived on space, those that lived on planets, moons, and comets, were annihilated, robot wars being necessarily ended more quickly than human wars. Everything took less time for robots.
The Lore that lived underneath space watched in dismay as one third of its population were wiped out. They mourned. But not for long.
The Lore soon found mourning was not to their liking.
*
Space
The Seraph class zealot, with its full compliment of missiles, picked up the tracer. There was a crew of four after the emitter on Saran Ul Par, and the Seraph had been charged with picking them up.
The Ecentrists, who had been chasing Orpal since a random call from a Karrisman, and narrowly escaped after they found a piece of the emitter had been taken from the hedonals ship, duly warned by their allies in the war against the Lore. The Enlightened had told them of the theft.
It was unthinkable. The rogue Orpal had stolen not one but three pieces of the emitter. It was unforgivable.
The Ecentrists knew nothing of the first piece that Kyle had taken.
The news was dire indeed. The old Lore bot was on the brink of something amazing, assembling all the pieces.
The Enlightened had no use for the emitter, pre-enlightenment tech was of little interest to the human races, but of vast import to the robot races. Each piece had been spread throughout the known universe, and no single entity could know where the whole rested for eternity.
But Orpal was close to finding them. The Ecentrists had to find Orpal. They could not risk him completing his quest. The triumvirate’s orders were clear. Wait until Orpal had the piece of the emitter he was going for, then pick him and his crew up. Let them do the hard work.
Now they would wait until the fourth piece had been found, and take it and the crew together.
They could always ask him nicely where the last piece was kept.
*
Shell ship, Habla’saem
Habla’saem had once toyed with the idea of a hobo army. Th
is was the closest he had come to fulfilling the idea.
The student classes of the Enlightened had begun his revolution, malleable in the extreme, in much the same way as any revolutionary would choose an army of the disaffected to carry out his plan. The plan was working remarkably well. The Ecentrists had paid for the first salvo in the war, hiring him to enlist the Enlightened. The Ecentrists would never be able to exterminate the Lore without the ability to travel under space. Thus the Enlightened had been needed.
But now the Ecentrists had joined the war openly, against his advice, Habla’saem had to take action to ensure his war ended satisfactorily – with the complete and utter destruction of the Lore. It would not do to have the Tradition step in, or to split into two factions, those that supported the Enlightened and those that refused to follow their creators.
Habla’saem was only in his line of business for the challenge really, and it would grate to leave the Lore alive after so much hard work on his part. Throughout history the socioassassin had played his part in the destruction of many minor races, but to fail in this would be to fail in his vocation. It was a failure that the socioassassin could never permit himself.
From the comfort of his synthesised shell environment Habla’saem had sat back this time and watched the play unfold. Soon, the Ecentrists, the Enlightened and the Tradition would be all that was left. Just as it should be, the three races throughout the galaxy. It was just a question of balance. But it would not happen unless he took a more hands on stance. It was time to throw himself into the fray.
Habla’saem was thinking about a race with dead numbers, The Cove. Most remarkable really, a left over from a time gone by, dead numbers or no, zombie numbers, was something left in them? Even with dead numbers the Cove had thrived. It was into Cove space that the Ecentrists were hunting the crew of four. Now four. The latest news channel, Habla’saem’s source for information, used by reading between the lines, had told of a piece of the emitter disappearing from Teraphod space.
The newscast, on the tragedy of Tenaphoria, newly exploded, had pricked his conscience. The Teraphods had been wiped from exisitence, and the socioassassin had had nothing to do with it.
It galled him.
Time was ripe for him to make his final move. The Ecentrists would be their own tool.
Just like the Lore. Perhaps, he mused, when the Lore had gone the Ecentrists would turn on him.
He thought and thought. It was time to raise the stakes. The Ecentrists were too dumb. The Enlightened too unreliable. The Lore had already decided a treaty was in order. All his provocation and still the Lore would not fight back. The Ecentrist would not stop though.
The Enlightened would never use the genesis weapon again, not since the last origin war. There was no point in giving it to them.
He would have to give the weapon to the Ecentrists, and hope they were brave enough to use it. Bravery or not, they were probably stupid enough. He looked at the weapon glistening on the floor, biotech and field tech melded together, almost like the Lore with their nanide connections.
It was time to give them the weapon. The Lore would be gone from the universe before the Enlightened or the Ecentrists could get cold feet and pull out.
Habla’saem pondered the problem as he set course for Huna. Who made the emitters? The Tradition thought that they were from their forefathers – whom they believed were the humans. The humans made machines…but then, machines made machines, too. The Ecentrists believed they had made machines first, that machines had evolved without humans, that machines were natural.
The Lore alone didn’t care who made them, it seemed, content to live out their lives in ignorance. Habla’saem’s thought that wasn’t good enough. Ignorance could kill.
His shell sat under space, watching the war and playing.
Then, within the safety of his eternal home, a crackling ball of static fire blew him off his feet…he looked around and thoughtlessly bashed the alarm.
He put the weapon down gingerly. Stop fiddling with it, he told himself for the third time that day.
And yet he was drawn to it. Such destruction. Such beauty.
*
Cetee was gone. It was time to face facts. Kyle didn’t like facing up to reality one bit. In his reality he was the greatest hunter in all of Suhrtraeti. There was nothing he could not catch. And now he had to sit and mutely watch as the one thing he truly wanted walked out of his life.
“Well, where the hell is she?” shouted Kyle at the trite-sounding Orpal.
“Don’t blame me when you really want to blame yourself. She told you she didn’t want to stay. “
“But there’s a piece of the emitter here! She’ll take it.”
“I thought you were concerned for her wellbeing?”
“No! Yes, of course I am, but I want to finish what I started! Now where’s she gone?”
“No doubt for the emitter.”
“I thought you could track her.”
“Well, I didn’t. I thought it would be impolite.”
“I wouldn’t have let her go if I’d thought you didn’t know where she is.”
“Perhaps you should let her go with grace, Kyle,” Archeon added to the debate.
“Shut up,”said Kyle, zipping on his armour and pulling on his genogun. “Keep out of this.”
Kyle fumed and the genogun was humming already. He was so much better with this weapon than he used to be.
Orpal said to Archeon, “Keep with him would you?”
“With pleasure,” replied Archeon.
“Be careful out there.” Orpal’s warning fell on deaf ears. Archeon, the last weapon, followed the greatest hunter the Suhrtraeti galaxy had ever seen out into the wilds of Saran UL par.
*
Saran UL Par
Kyle ran out with Archeon tight behind him. The wind was wild and tugged at his unruly hair. Small whirlwinds of dust swept around his feet.
Kyle’s armour, a lightweight variation of his diving suit, filtered the nitrogenous atmosphere through so well that smells could be discerned in the vast wasteland that was Saran UL par. The planet was continually scoured of life by the Cove, and the planet was used as a dumping ground for all manner of ships. There were Jaril Doon ships a plenty, the Doons being an indigenous people of this outback of space, unfortunately hampered in their evolution by their diminutive size. Their weapons were powerful enough to prove bothersome to any would-be conquerors, small though, so that their sting was no worse than that of a gu gnat.
Why anyone would want to smell the planet was lost on Kyle. The outside, in the scrapyard, smelled heavily of ozone and lubricant. Musty aromas wafted from the rotting ships.
Scrap ships had been left to grow for so long they had taken on a geometric quality, akin to flowers grown in the wild they swayed subtly in their metal towers, the groan of metal on metal a siren song for unwary ears.
“Kyle, if you really want to wander about on this planet I suggest you take this?”
Archeon threw the navicom unit, which Kyle thrust onto his free arm. Kyle scowled at Archeon. His gun hummed.
“I thought I made it plain I don’t want or need company,” he growled.
The bulge over Kyle’s scared right arm swung toward Archeon.
Archeon, shaped like a gat moriumthraite, his favourite shape, grinned back toothily.
“None of the inhabitants here are friendly – they hate outsiders. Might have something to do with the Cove cull every year. They treat this land like a weed, scour it with gamma rays every year to ensure nothing thrives. Nothing thrives anyway, but they live. They also worship ships – they see them in the skys and try to understand them. I fear they never will,” Archeon told Kyle.
In his eargen Orpal added, “If you see one of the inhabitants I suggest you run.”
“I run from no man.” Kyle checked his navicom, and took a left hand turn in the unnatural roads grown from the mass of dead ships.
He paused where Cetee had turned from sight earli
er on.
“That’s where she left range on my proximity scanner. I don’t have her on scanner at all now, so I’d advise you to check before you shoot today. It would seem a shame to obtain the next piece of the emitter over the spilled blood of anyone unfortunate enough to get in the way of your gun.”
“I’ll thank you to let me do the shooting. You do the worrying. I’m not about to shoot Cetee if I find her. Perhaps it was my mistake to let her leave.”
“The lady seems quite wilful. I doubt anything you said would have changed matters.”
“Perhaps if I’d told her how I felt…”
“Perhaps, hunter, perhaps.”
Orpal told Kyle to go left, and said nothing more on the matter, other than to reiterate “If you see them just shut up and run. Trust me on this hunter.”
“Just shut up about it already.”
Kyle and Archeon wandered further into the ominous graveyard.
“Which way, Orpal?” said Kyle into his eargen as he came to the next fork. The navicom blinked proximity warnings at him, but there were no openings of ships that looked inviting enough to enter without an invitation. The sun overhead finally settled on a course of action, sinking below the high horizon and elongating the shadows. Archeons stalk eyes roved the horizon, scanning for unfriendlies. In this place, it was likely to be anything they saw.
“That way. Into the graveyard.”
“The whole place is a graveyard.”
“Well,” said Orpal, “you’re right, but on your nine, can you push through there?”
Back on Kyle’s homeworld Guron he hadn’t encountered this problem. He was uncomfortable with his weakness. Archeon and Orpal didn’t chide him about being directionally challenged, but the weakness added to Kyle’s already battered ego. If there’s one thing a hunter doesn’t need it’s his ego challenging. He figured it was best to bring it up before they did.
Evolution Page 17
